


The Dumpsterfires But Also the Dragons that are Us

by Anonymous



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Drama, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:47:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25174852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Relationships: Sebastian/Female Player (Stardew Valley)
Kudos: 4
Collections: Anonymous





	1. The Fire

As Sebastian drove home from his motorcycle ride to the city on the very first day of spring, he saw smoke painted the patch of sky above the abandoned farmhouse. He drove a little faster, leaving the concrete road where the broken bus stop laid in wait for repair, towards the farmland that had been nothing but ruin and wild grasses for years. He did not know what he expected to see, for the very thing he felt as he drove slowly through the nonexistent gate to the farmland was dread. Ah, dread. The feeling was so familiar to him. It was dread ever since he got a new father, a father who probably never thought of him as his son at all. Sebastian's dark leather glove-cladded fingers curled around his motorcycle's handlebars. He did not like this feeling. He did not like it but he did not know how to stop it at all.

There was no wild fire in the farmland.

The familiar dread of discomfort and unwantedness subsided into dread of awareness, for someone was there.

She. Long hair and accentuated hips and a body tinier than his, standing facing a fire she started near a newly clear ground.

Sebastian's sight found her back first, almost magnanimous-looking and gigantic compared the fire she started several steps away from the old farmhouse. Then, his eyes found her face, as she turned around to the sound of his arrival: orange and molten gold from embers light, she looked like she was in flame, the flame itself. Sebastian blinked slowly as everything felt like it was played in slow motion. He had never seen such a thing in his life before: the dragon lady, bathed with fire and darkness of this land. 

It took him a while before he realised that smoke was coming out of her mouth and nose and it was fitting that she was a dragon. But she also smoked, he recognised, as he registered the rich burning colour at the tip of her cigarette, and Sebastian very slowly remembered about the newcomer from town that should be residing in this farm from now on. Sebastian was standing by his big motorcycle, in dark leather jacket and boots, but even then he felt like he was rivalled in badass-ness.

The newest addition to his tiny town was dark eyes filled with flame, an almost finished cigarette, and flowing hairs that framed her face wildly.

Her existence, accompanied by the realisation that she was there, threw Sebastian into some sort of adrenaline rush.

... But that was all before he realised that her cheeks were damp from water, not fire.

From tears, not rage.

 _Then_ , he slowly told himself, _This was not a greeting, an initiation of new land and new cove._

_But a funeral._

They gazed at each other eyes in silence only disturbed by the valley's melodies of forest and mountain. They gazed at each other in a calculating way that made Sebastian thought of two beasts, trapped in a cage or met by accident in a jungle, and now they must attack each other, devour one another, to survive, to live, because no one shall leave the scene unscathed. He said nothing. He waited for her to utter the first noise, to be the weak one who break the thickened air between them. But she blew her cigarette and said nothing. Sebastian looked at her as the action splattered more colour into her lightened face, hazed for a bit from the smoke.

He thought he knew what dread was, but this was another level of dread.

Of he knew that he would not survive whatever _this_ was.


	2. The Sun

As Robin deplored Sebastian's smoking habit, she made that pinched expression when the new farmer wafted with a scent of cigarette upon her house. Sebastian was just making his way upstairs for a very late brunch that was tipping into tea time when he saw the newest addition to Pelican City through the doorway. Her T-shirt was black and she wore jeans. 

(In the end, that night, he made a little nod before leaving the farmland on his motorcycle. He did not say anything. He was not quite sure why.)

"Sebastian!" Robin's voice rose a pitch higher upon seeing him. "Come greet the new farmer. This is Sebastian, my son."

He was mentally groaning as he put his face on display for the stranger.

She looked more human in the warm sunlight of Robin's store area. Her hair was still loose and her black shirt was definitely a stark contrast to the warm colour of the room, but there were no traces of tears on her cheeks. Sebastian made a small nod, once again, before retreating towards the kitchen, where he would have his badly needed cup of coffee.

That was so awkward. So awful. He was awkward. And awful. Awkward. Awful. The words dance in his mind as he unconsciously tensed hug himself on his journey to the kitchen. It was so uncomfortable Sebastian felt the skin was crawling. But he could do something about it. He could always steer clear from the farmer's sight, for he spend most of his time working in front of his computer anyway.

He tried to take several deep breathes as he waited for the water to boil on the electric kettle in the kitchen. He tried to listen to the tiniest sounds, to signs where Maru and Demetrius were. However, all he could hear was the distant conversation of his mother and the new farmer's, a muffled series of noises. Not before long, he heard the front door opened and closed. The farmer had left. Sebastian let out a breath he did not know he was holding.

His coffee ready, he half ran to go back to work, back to distraction, so he did not have to think about the discomfort that made his skin crawled.


	3. The Open Water

As the warmth of spring invited people to go out more, Sebastian reduced his time stepping under the sun or even leaving his basement of a bedroom. However, that day was different. It was only a little before midday and he found himself by the open water a couple of steps away from his house in the mountain. He could not hear Linus or the guild's members in the distance. His mother had went for her aerobic class while Demetrius and Maru worked on their blindingly white lab. Sebastian took a deep breath, finding peace in knowing that at least for a very short foreseeable future, he could be alone. He had brought his cigarettes and a lighter with him, but he did not feel like smoking. If anything, he noticed, lately, with swirling dark feelings and distaste for himself, that he had been coughing more and that he was harming his body by smoking. Yet, it was hard to stop. It truly was. 

So he stood there, watching the water, hating himself, and wishing that somehow something would save him from himself.

There was this popular, legendary song he liked, as cheesy and as predictable as it is. The singer was a band whose leader had passed away in a famous illness that also killed other millions. These days, the line of their most popular song, _I don't want to die, I sometimes wish I had never been born at all_ , stuck inside his head, and it made him felt so many things. He was somewhat glad and relieved to know that he was not the only human who felt like life was somehow a mistake. But he hated feeling ungrateful, feeling like he could not control anything in his life, feeling like a total loser as he spent his days working as a freelancer, barely able to pay his mother a rent. Perhaps, he wanted to be as free- and as gullible- as Sam, who did not really feel like anything was wrong in a house where he could continue to live like a boy as Jodi did everything for their housekeeping.

Sebastian thought about how everyone in this cursed little town was really pent up and suffering in their own way.

However, it wasn't like the city people were not suffering, was it?

Speaking of city people...

In the distance, someone stepped out of the cave across the open water. From the mannerism alone, Sebastian could tell that it was someone he knew- not someone who had lived here for ages like him. The newest addition to Pelican Town trotted towards the small log that acted like a mini bridge towards the farm with a backpack behind her. Her long hair was tied into a ponytail. The closer she was, as she was walking down towards where Sebastian was, the more Sebastian could see the strained look on her face. He wondered why she didn't put his sight on him. Perhaps he was blending into the shade underneath the tree next to him. After she was close enough to turn before the little mysterious statue next to Sebastian's house, she finally saw him. She nodded, lightly, before turning her head away and continued her journey back, presumably to her new house.

Sebastian was left with the feeling that she could've said more. After all, their first meeting and all the unspoken exchanges, could not be reduced to acts like they totally met in a normal setting afterwards.

(Though some parts of Sebastian, the cans of worms inside of him that were always squiggling and squirming and therefore he never truly feel comfortable with anything, with the godforsaken life he live, had yelled that it would be better if they acted like nothing happen- like they were _normal_ , just like most people are.

Normal.)


End file.
